The Last of Us has a game-breaking save bug, here’s what to do

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Naughty Dog’s next opus, The Last of Us, is not only surprisingly not an Uncharted sequel, but is also much, much darker in tone. Long before the game released, it was being heralded as one of this generation’s best games. This is not only strange because the game hadn’t released, but also because nothing that good traditionally releases only a few months before the next new console generation. Regardless, TLOU releases today, and you can end this generation on a bang, rather than the traditional whimper of worthwhile releases drying up. Unfortunately, there is reportedly a potentially game-breaking issue with the game’s save system.

Reports from users who aren’t stuck at work and are able to play the game have claimed that the game’s autosave feature randomly ceases to function. This means your progress won’t save, and you likely won’t even notice until you try and load.

Thankfully, the issue is avoidable, though it is somewhat tedious. If you press start and invoke the menu, you’ll see one of two messages. If you see “less than X minutes ago,” everything is working properly. If you see “autosaving, please wait,” that means the autosave function has stopped working. So if you notice this message, you’ll have to exit the game and reload from your last save. User reports have also claimed that sometimes when you try to exit the game in order to fix this bug, the game will freeze, forcing you to restart the console.

You can manually save the game through the menu, so since you’ll be hitting start to periodically check on the health of the autosave function, you might as well create a separate save file or two just in case. Other users have claimed that sometimes the game doesn’t save even if the autosave function seems working. A possible fix for this issue is to load your save file from the “Load Save” option instead of the “Continue” option, and you’ll be able to load the proper save that seemingly wasn’t previously recorded.

Naughty Dog hasn’t yet commented on the issue, but if the user reports are true, then the developer will most likely be working very hard to put out a fix as soon as possible. In the meantime, don’t forget to press start and check on the health of the autosave function from time to time.